Click on the image below to see it in our online catalog.
John Austin Sands Monks was born November 7, 1850 in Cold Spring, New York. Listed as a painter and an etcher he was known for his depictions of landscapes and animals, particularly sheep. He was a member of several prestigious art organizations including the Boston Art Club where he exhibited over 70 oil paintings, watercolors and etchings.
He studied painting under George Inness who is recognized as one of the most influential American landscape artists of the 19th century. Monks is known to have traveled with Inness through the White Mountains on painting jaunts and in 1877 he exhibited a painting titled Mt. Washington, Jackson. Inness was considered a Tonalist which was an artistic style that used neutral hues in a limited range to give a painting a sense of atmosphere and mystery.
In the JHS collection is a painting titled A Flock at Pasture donated in 1973 by Mrs. William D. Laurie who was the granddaughter of Monks. The tonalist influence is evident in Monks’ use of middle tones of grays, blues and ochres. Dramatic storm clouds blanket the foreground while in an upper corner the sky is just starting to clear lifting the mood.
The painting is especially meaningful to Jamestown as it shows a flock of sheep heading south on North Road crossing the Great Creek with the Jamestown windmill clearly sitting on the horizon. A letter in the JHS archives from S. Morton Vose II says that it was his father who persuaded Monks to open a studio on Conanicut Island. He recalled that “he filled one end with windows and had a ‘corral’ outside, so he could paint sheep from windows.” Another passage says “the widow of a farmer in that area once told me that they used to loan their sheep to the artist.”
Monks died in 1917 in Chicago. His prints are often signed J.A.S. Monks in the plate and can be found in the collections of the MFA Boston, National Gallery, The Metropolitan Museum, Harvard Art Museums, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and others.
A JHS member has promised to donate another painting of Jamestown by John Austin Sands Monks. Donations help us further our knowledge of Jamestown and preserve that knowledge for future generations. Please consider donating your Jamestown memorabilia.
